Negotiating the Border in Song China: Foreign Policy, Border Management, and Border-Crossings, 1005-1122
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NEGOTIATING THE BORDER IN SONG CHINA: FOREIGN POLICY, BORDER MANAGEMENT, AND BORDER-CROSSINGS, 1005-1122 BY YI YANG THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in East Asian Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Adviser: Professor Kai-wing Chow ABSTRACT This thesis discusses the issue of foreign policy, border management, and border- crossing incidents during Song-Liao peacetime (1005-1122). It focuses on one of the earliest borderlines drawn between two great powers of northeast Asia in the eleventh century, the Liao and the Song. This thesis not only traces its origin, establishment, and maintenance, it also spotlights a specific phenomenon of border-crossing, by generals and officials as well as commoners. By focusing on these border-crossing incidents and their repercussions in government, sometimes at decision-making level, this thesis tries to portray a more detailed and accurate of the Song-Liao border, and explore the importance impact of various issues happened in borderlands to Song policies. Based on officials records, literary collections of literati, memorials by officials, and travelogues written by envoys, this thesis addresses several questions: How was the border between the Song and the Liao established in the first place? Ever since its establishment, how did both states stabilize and maintain the border? What were the developments of previously existed diplomatic practices? What were the new developments stimulated by this freshly inaugurated border? Were the perceptions and understandings of the border the same according to different people ranging from emperors to farmers, from generals to soldiers, from people of the Song and those of the ii Liao? How did the government react to intentional and unintentional border-crossings? And what roles did those reactions play in the making of foreign policies? This thesis demonstrates that with the signing of the Treaty of Chanyuan, a borderline that demarcated the territories of the Liao and the Song was immediately established. Various diplomatic institutions, regulations, and practices were subsequently inaugurated after the treaty was signed. These institutions and regulations, at different levels came to regulate various aspects of borderland issues such as routine administrative matters, espionage, trade, blockade of manuscripts and printed books, etc. This thesis also highlights a particular phenomenon of border- crossing incidents which offers us a chance to see how the border was actually conceived and maintained in the eleventh century. The handlings of these incidents, when occasionally radical and unconventional, caused significant reverberations both at the local and central levels. These reactions mirrored the mentalities of Song foreign policy makers when dealing with border and territory issues. They also served as a point of departure for future policy-making. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO: THE TREATY OF CHANYUAN AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SONG-LIAO BORDER .................................................................................................... 7 PRE-CHANYUAN SONG-LIAO RELATION ................................................................................. 10 THE TREATY OF CHANYUAN .................................................................................................... 14 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SONG-LIAO BORDER ................................................................. 17 CHAPTER THREE: NEW INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES AT THE SONG-LIAO BORDER ..................................................................................................................................... 21 QUECHANG MARKETS AND SMUGGLING IN BORDERLANDS .................................................. 23 BLOCKADE OF MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS ............................................................... 27 INTELLIGENCE AND ESPIONAGE ............................................................................................... 30 CHAPTER FOUR: BORDER-CROSSING INCIDENTS AND FOREIGN POLICIES 34 BORDER-CROSSINGS INCIDENTS ............................................................................................... 34 A STANDARD PROCEDURE AND RADICAL REACTIONS ........................................................... 39 BORDER RIVER FISHING INCIDENTS AND FOREIGN POLICY DEBATES .................................... 41 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 44 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION .......................................................................................... 46 ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................... 48 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 49 iv Chapter One: Introduction Two contradictory assumptions concerning borders are often taken for granted in the modern cartography. On the one hand, a borderline that clearly demarcates the territories of two states is generally accepted as a modern invention peculiar to the nation-states. On the other hand, cartographers, without much hesitation, use borderlines on every map to delineate territories of ancient and medieval geopolitical entities that existed long before the time they claim appropriate to use those lines. These two assumptions have been challenged by recent scholarship on China in the eleventh century. Historians’ inquiries into the Chanyuan Treaty 澶淵之盟 show that the idea of a borderline, however vaguely it may be understood, already appeared as early as the eleventh century between the Song 宋 and the Liao 遼.1 A substantial part of the treaty was about delineating and sustaining a specific border. Similar territorial delineations, copying the pattern of the Song-Liao borderline, were also visible between the Song and the Xi Xia 西夏, and between the Song and the Jin 金. Nicolas Tackett’s article on the Great Wall and conceptualization of the border astutely questions the assumption that “date the emergence of precisely demarcated borderlines, ‘border 1 Naomi Standen, Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 25; Tao Jinsheng 陶晉生, Two Sons of Heaven: Studies in Sung-Liao Relations (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 1988), 10-24. Tao Jinsheng, Song Liao guanxi shi yanjiu 宋遼關係史研究 (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1984): 24, 101. And Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光, Zhai zi Zhongguo 宅 茲中國 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011), 48-49. 1 consciousness’, territorial sovereignty and strictly-defined notions of the ‘geo-body’ to post-Westphalian Europe or post-seventeenth-century Eurasia.”2 Yet how was this borderline constructed, understood, and maintained a thousand years ago remains a question to be answered. Even modern states equipped with high technology and backed by massive budgets cannot afford to build a physical wall to separate the territories or segregate their peoples. Moreover, modern states are still suffering from problems like illegal immigrantion, smuggling, unpermitted trespassing of borders. Naturally, one may easily cast doubts on how effective an eleventh-century border could be in terms of preventing and solving these problems. For instance, in the Treaty of Chanyuan, we see agreements such as (1) both sides should repatriate fugitives, and (2) neither side should disturb the farmland and crop of the other.3 Was there any real guarantee that those terms would be implemented? Or were they merely terms on paper and hardly made any difference comparing with earlier periods? This thesis tries to recapture the actual condition of the border. More importantly, it tackles the question of how this 2 Nicolas Tackett, “The Great Wall and Conceptualizations of the Border Under the Northern Song,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 38 (2008): 103. 3 The complete treaty is transcribed in Li Tao 李燾, Xu zizhi tongjian changbian 續資治通鑒長編 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985) [henceforth XCB], 1299; Two English summaries of the agreements in this treaty see Tao Jinsheng, Two Sons of Heaven: Studies in Sung-Liao Relations, 15. And Naomi Standen, Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China, 25. 2 border was defined and conceived by different agents, the Song government, the Liao government, and their borderland populations. Scholars who study the Song-Liao relation have addressed some of the issues relating to the border. One of the pioneering Song-Liao relation scholars in United States Tao Jinsheng 陶晉生, when discussing Wang Anshi’s view of Song foreign policy, briefly discussed Wang’s attitude towards Song-Liao border disputes that happened in 1072-1073 and 1074-1076。4 In a more recent collection of essays, he analyzed the 1074- 1076 dispute again by looking specifically into its negotiation process.5 Tao has also explored the role of a particular borderland prefecture Xiongzhou 雄州 played in Song- Liao relation.6 One of the other pioneering works about the Song-Liao border is Naomi Standen’s Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China.7 Standen’s book primarily looks at border-crossing cases in the ninth century China. Her book defines and distinguishes border-related concepts such as border, boundary, frontier,